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Legislative Prayer and the Secret Costs of Religious Endorsements

By Alliance Alert

For over fifty years, the Establishment Clause has generally required the government to be neutral on religious questions. That principle, however, has become more controversial with time. Many quite moderate judges and commentators have come, in varying degrees, to reject it. They have come to see many endorsements of religion as insignificant. Where exactly, they ask, is the real harm in the government speaking religiously? Who exactly is hurt when the government pushes a religious message, as in the Ten Commandments or the Pledge of Allegiance? Given that religious endorsements do so little apparent harm, maybe they are not worth striking down - particularly given the hostile societal reaction that generates. Yet there are obvious difficulties evaluating this argument. For as long as the government cannot speak religiously, we cannot really see the harms that would flow from such speech. And unable to evaluate the severity of those harms, we cannot really judge the wisdom of the neutrality principle.

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).